Yesh (Y) Salz

Yesh ( Y ) (they/them), Co-Director at Restoring Lifeways, is a community organizer, facilitator poet, rites-of-passage guide and song-tender whose life and passion is dedicated to building collective resilience in times of deep change. Y’s work meets at the confluence of trans-local coalition-building, queer ecologies, and diasporic culture-tending. As a space-holder, Y draws on the radical, intersectional legacies of their mixed-heritage Jewish ancestors, weaving anti-imperial, post-empiric stories, song, myth, ritual and clowning into multi-genre community ritual space. In addition to their work at Restoring Lifeways, they are currently pursuing an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts where they are writing on topics of queer ancestors, cultural resilience, radical Jewish diasporism. Y strives to live into their inherited name as a Soloveichik or “Nightingale” bringing song and story into (and up from) the darkest places.